For most credit union executives, seeing a member cry is usually a bad thing. But for Kathy Ward, senior vice president of branch operations at Navy Federal Credit Union in Vienna, Va., it was a pleasant part of a recent trip to San Diego – and part of a much bigger picture.

“She was carrying a box of Kleenex, and she was quivering,” Ward told CU Times. “She saw me in a suit; she figured I was somebody from headquarters. She wanted to thank me because the member service representatives in the branch helped her get through a tremendously rough time in her life. She didn't think she could make it through without them. She was tearful, and it was a very moving experience. It was a reminder to me that mobile apps can do a lot, they provide a lot of convenience, but there's still that face-to-face interaction that the mobile devices don't have.”

Scenes like that are more than just gratifying encounters. They're a major factor in the increasingly tough decisions credit unions make about spending capital on branches in an era when branch transaction activity is roughly half what it was in 1992, according to the FDIC, and check use is barely a third of what it was in 2003.